This kid might have grown up in a pretty rough neighborhood

The first round of Halloween decorations are up!  Next to Christmas, Halloween is absolutely my favorite holiday.  There is something about everything being off-kilter and out of the ordinary that makes it simply...fun.

so far:

Tombstones now are all over the flowerbed.  Red light is in the fountain.  AND the lights are up.  Fog machine is prepped, strobe is ready.

And ELICHIA IS READY TO BE EVIL!!!

Early this month I attended the Future of Web Applications Expo in London.  It was certainly an interesting event, and anytime you can spend a day talking about the latest web applications on the internet and the night looking at the Round Church of the Templars it can't be bad.  The event did create a very interesting debate regarding startup hubs.

To call ONEsite a startup does it a bit of disservice.  Catalog.com has been in business almost 15 years, far from a startup.  ONEsite still faces many of the same pressures, challenges, and the like that any startup faces, we just happen to operate at a profit and have a profitable parent company as well, so some of that financial pressure is lessened - some at least.  ONEsite still has the need for capital that many early stage business do, it is just not a complete necessity for survival like it is for so many other companies.

However, one of the challenges ONEsite faces is its geographic location.  We are based in Oklahoma, the development team is in Oklahoma, we have the advantage of getting some of the top talent from Oklahoma - but there is certainly a lack of easy access to capital.  Which brings me back to the debate.  At the FOWA Expo, Paul Graham(Y-combinator, Etc) gave a keynote on the future of web startups.  It includes a lot of good information, but a significant part of the speech was on the necessity of startup hubs - places like Silicon Valley where there is easy access to capital - both the venture and human kind, with web experience.  This actually prompted one of the event's founders to take the stage, immediately after the speech, and give a full rebuttal.

Many new web companies, including ONEsite, are proving that success outside the valley is possible, and that there are distinct advantages to being located somewhere else - it is about the business, the idea, the talent, and the technology - not about the location.  This is the internet, and each of those plays a much greater role in success than location ever could.  And while there is some stickiness to the Silicon Valley startup - the shift is already occurring. The Wall Street Journal took notice of the changing landscape in September (Web 2.0 Deals Spread Beyond San Francisco).  A Web 2.0 startup has a lot of challenges to face before it can become successfully, but location is not, and should not, be a blocker to that success.

Online Communities are organic - they are constantly changing and evolving as they grow. For our technology, this means a constant pressure to adapt and enhance. Our development efforts are focused on building a better platform each and every day. Technology aside, it means that along with the changing dynamic of the communities, the practices, presentation, and involvement of our partners and clients has to constantly change as well. Because of this constant evolution, that only increases in pressure as the communities increase in size, there is an incredible need to create and maintain an active, collaborative relationship with our clients. The SAAS model lets us keep the technology constantly updated, but those relationships take real effort on both part to make these communities successful.

Obviously, coming to Oklahoma is not a simple trip across the street from one office building to the next. It doesn't quite require a passport, but it is certainly a different experience for most of our major clients. Every one of our major clients we have encouraged to come and visit our offices, meet the team face to face, get to know us, our technology, and our platform here where the work gets done. And it is remarkably successful. If you come see us, you'll want to partner with us. We see it as almost a necessity for building the collaborative foundation that is necessary for the successful launch of a new community.

We had a client team in this past week to go over the detailed goals - from the highest level down to the tactical features and functions - of an upcoming community. They brought some incredible ideas to the table, and it is a truly innovative concept they are looking to create - something that is surprisingly rare given the space. At lunch we took them to the lake (Oklahoma fact #287: We have the second most shoreline of any state - thanks to a slew of man-made lakes) and treated them to some oyster nachos and alligator. It was at lunch that we first told them about "The Great State Fair of Oklahoma."

And we encouraged them to go, half-jokingly. I don't know if the stories we told were enough to entice them to go out and sample the particular magic of Oklahoma's State Fair. Most of that magic comes from the incredibly culinary invention of frying. Everything that could conceivably be dropped in a vat of boiling oil and fried is served up at the fair. Fried snickers - of course. Fried coke - believe it or not, possible and delicious. Fried cattle testicle - well that is a delicacy and more for a restaurant like Cattlemen's than the fair. But that high per capita heart disease rate doesn't come out of thin air, far from it. Still, it is worth a yearly trek out to the fairgrounds to sample the giant turkey legs, funnel cake, and particular type of people that the fair attracts. Perhaps not for the out of towners, but it is a wild ride and a place where you can find anything and everything fried.

A few members of the ONEsite team made the way down to Dallas for the annual QuakeCon event - basically 4 days of more video games than any normal human should endure. The Dallas morning news described it as a "sea of pale and pasty flesh flooding Dallas." For some of us, this has been an almost decade long tradition, but a few of the group we went with got to experience it for the first time. It is always pretty exciting, and not a bad escape from reality for a few days. They had individuals come from as far as Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and certainly from all of the US. And yes, for a lot of us, it was like the mother ship had come home.

Here's a few of us - You can barely see Josh's head behind the electric router orw ahtever it was, the rest of us you can see our backs, and barely make out Hayes's face. There was enough electricty in the room to power a town of a bout 40,000.

Optimus Prime was not absent from the event. This is actually a computer case that the winner of the case competition created - $15,000 and 300 hours of construction + a little energon, and a lot of luck.

QuakeCon has a few yearly traditions - the same QuakeCon girls always show up to MC he events, and the same beverage of choice is always on hand in ample quantities.

Not the worst way to spend an August weekend.